While Hollywood geared up for the Oscars this past weekend, we in the Education Department prepared for our own celebration of film: free screenings of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West for Families at the Herbst Theatre! The movie was a shortened, one-hour version of the production that premiered at War Memorial Opera House in June 2010.

For thirty-five years I’ve maintained that the classic works of the American Musical Theater are fit to be in the repertoire of opera houses. In many ways they ARE our opera. Many were composed for “legit,” unamplified voices, with sizable choruses, orchestras and dancers.

It always surprises me how many people ask me if I work for the San Francisco Ballet during the off-season or assume that I am unemployed from the end of the last performance of the fall season until we load in for the summer season in May. I’m here to assure you that I don’t have any trouble keeping busy from December through April.

I always spend the first few weeks of December doing what I call, “picking up the pieces.” This means that I finally answer all those emails that I’ve been putting off because they required more research, and if I’m lucky can get the virtual in-box pared down from 500+ messages to less than 50 that still require some sort of action.

As a native New Yorker, if someone had told me 3 years ago that I'd be working with the San Francisco Opera today, I'd have thought they were crazy. But, here I am, in California, having graduated from Merola and finished with my 2nd year as an Adler, and a lot has changed. One could say it has actually jump-started my career in singing because the past 2 years as an Adler were the first that I've sustained my income solely from singing. I've been coached into many roles, been given the time to learn a technique that works for me, and worked with a lot of the people we call stars in the opera business.

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.